Welcome back to the Hall of Fame Series here on 18Stripes. If you want to read the prior posts to get a better understand you can go here. Apologies for the delay between posts, moving and pandemics are no easy task. Today, we pivot away from the Ty Willingham era (slightly) and dive into the Weis era of Notre Dame Football with the only All-American of those two BCS teams, and one of the more fascinating stories in his post-Irish career, Jeff Samardzija.
Background
Samardzija was a part of that first recruiting class post-Willingham’s successful first season for the Irish. He was a three-star WR from Valparaiso, IN, who committed in February of 2003. Samardzija spent the majority of his time under Willingham as a special teamer but hinted at future success in the disappointing Insight Bowl loss against Oregon State. He reeled in 5 catches for 89 yards, both career highs to that point. Shark still entered the 2005 season as the #3 wide receiver behind stalwart Maurice Stovall and the emerging Rhema McKnight. The first couple of weeks of that season would end up changing the entire trajectory for Samardzija.
The All-American Seasons: 2005/06
Samardzija’s stats for the first couple of games of the 2005 season may not jump out to the average football fan, but Samardzija made highlight catches that made watching Notre Dame fun again. A diving TD catch vs Pitt and a catch after a deflection in traffic at Michigan helped put Shark on the map. Combine that with the unfortunate injury to McKnight during said Michigan game, and Samardzija was firmly in the spotlight under the Weis offense. He followed up those reps with a 3 TD effort against Michigan State and career-high in yards against his former coach in Seattle, firmly inserting himself alongside his QB as the players to watch on this Notre Dame team. Then, he had THAT catch against Purdue. And then THAT catch against USC. Then, he literally and metaphorically taunted the Stanford defense as he put in a strong performance to clinch a BCS berth for the Irish for the first time since 2000. Samardzija ended up finishing as a finalist for the Biletnikoff Award for best WR, falling to Oregon State’s Mike Hass, but picking up some All-American honors on his way to leading the Irish in receiving and splitting team MVP honors with Brady Quinn.
Expectations were high for both Samardzija and the Irish after he and Quinn both decided to return for their senior seasons and try and lead Notre Dame to a National Championship. Shark kept his end of the bargain, despite not having as gaudy numbers as the year prior, scoring a TD in all but two games of the season. However, after the blowout loss to Michigan early in the season, the overall heat on most Irish players not named Quinn went away. Samardzija added to his legacy with iconic plays against Michigan State and the oft remembered TD catch and run vs UCLA. He was named a finalist for Biletnikoff Award but fell short to Calvin Johnson (which is nothing to be ashamed of if we’re being honest). Samardzija added another All-American honor as the Football Writers Association put him as one of their WRs to give himself the dubious honor of being the only Irish player to make Major All-American teams in multiple years.
Final Stat Line 2005: 77 Rec 1,249 Yds 15 TDs 16.2 YPC
Final Stat Line 2006: 78 Rec 1,017 Yds 12 TDs 13.0 YPC
Post College
It’s widely known across the sports world that Shark decided to go with baseball, where at Notre Dame he finished with a 21-6 record with a 3.82 ERA and 159 strikeouts. He was drafted prior to his 2006 season in the fifth round by the Chicago Cubs. When asked after the fact about his decision between baseball and football Samardzija stated, “I like how you’re treated in baseball. You’re treated like a man. Show up on your time. It’s your career. They don’t hold your hand as much as football. That always bugged me about football — meetings and things like that. I know what I’m doing wrong. You don’t need to reiterate it to me that I’m [messing] up.” I’m not sure if that’s an indictment on how Willingham and Weis ran their meetings but it ended up pushing Shark over to baseball where he has made a living for himself, stilling playing as of 2020 on the San Francisco Giants. He chose that over probably being the second-best WR in the 2007 NFL Draft class, depending on how you feel about him over Ted Ginn Jr and Dwayne Bowe (I personally like him more than both players but the debate is there).
Why He Should Be In
Honestly, this is a tough decision and unique to this look back. While eligible, I’m not sure Notre Dame would put him up for consideration. He was the first of a long line of great impact Irish WRs that has spanned to at least the 2019 season. He can be used as a person to represent those Irish teams that were so efficient and dominant on offense that hasn’t been matched in the same way since. Also, in the aforementioned 2005 season, a case could be made that Shark was the better WR than Hass as he was widely recognized by major and other selectors for All-American teams and received the Consensus All-American honors because of it. Plus, there are not a lot of WRs that can say that they were two-time finalists for the Biletnikoff Award. He set Notre Dame records at the time where Tim Brown and Rocket Ismail were both productive WRs which should be considered a positive.
Why He Shouldn’t Be In
Much like the prior two entrants on this look back, the only hardware Shark has is that 2005 Co-MVP of the team and that doesn’t seem enough to cut it. Plus, I would think that his lack of hardware combined with his decision to go to baseball wouldn’t sit well with these “football positive” people making the decisions at HoF. Charlie Ward, the closest comparison I could think of, is in the College Hall of Fame but he also has the honors of Heisman Award Winner, Davey O’Brien Award Winner, and National Champion. Plus, his stats dip in 2006 when the spotlight was truly on the Irish and I think that will get remembered more than his performance in 2005.
Ultimate Ruling: A Fair Chance
Much like Walton in the last entry, Samardzija has one of the more interesting cases. I wavered back and forth on this ultimate ruling and landed on A Fair Chance. I think that if Notre Dame wanted to push Shark they could and that his highlights and accomplishments still stand on their own merits. I’m unsure if they will push him for the Hall, which makes the point moot, but I think he could be an interesting case for the committee to examine.
What do you think of Shark’s career at Notre Dame? His choice to stick to baseball? Sound off below. Next time I’m going to take a dive into one of the best and popular players of the late Weis era, to the point the Alma Mater was altered to show his popularity. Golden Tate headlines our next entry.
Samardzija is probably my favorite ND player of all time.
People remember the 2005 team for almost beating Southern Cal. But in my view, the real legacy of that team (and 2006, to a certain extent) was ND proving it could run a modern, exciting offense.
I like Kelly’s clinical destruction approach, and obviously he’s a much better coach than Weis. But the 05/06 teams were pretty magical.
He’s one of my Favs too. A great WR. I was at the UCLA game when he and Quinn saved the day. He wasn’t the fastest ever but man did he make clutch plays.
Agreed! That UCLA play is the big one that sticks in my head when I think of the Shark. In my opinion, he was a top tier college football player and would have been a great pro in the NFL, but he probably made the wiser choice (long-term health-wise) to go with baseball.
Shark’s career earning through 2020 (he’s a FA after this year):
$122,725,000.
And to think, if he’d stuck with football, he’d probably have made 1/3 of that and had life-long injuries.
I remember being so sad as a 9 year-old that he chose baseball.